Nesting
by Lou2U
Summary: Lily can't really explain the impulse, not even to herself. But she's been more than happy to argue for it, yes. Oh, yes. Because her husband is far too caring for his own good. Rated T for a bad-tempered, heavily pregnant Lily.


**Disclaimer – I am not J.K Rowling. The only part of this that's mine is the mass of italics, brackets, long ramble-y sentences and swearing. You have been warned.**

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Lily can't really explain the impulse, not even to herself. But she's been more than happy to argue for it, yes. Oh, yes. Because she has a _bloody twat arse_ of a husband who's too damn caring for his own good.

"But Lily," James'd said earlier, trying to pacify her as if she were a child, "it's not _safe_." And her temper flared because how dare he? She _knew_ the risks just as well as he did, she wasn't a clueless porcelain doll.

James tried again, "I know that! But it still isn't a good idea." And seeing the fury etched on every line of her face (the lines he'd given her, the bastard, because every day she spent with him she aged a damn decade), he'd put his hands up as a gesture of surrender. "Look, if you're desperate for this, really desperate…" he trailed off, evidently trying to finish in a way that wouldn't infuriate her further, which just made it worse, and she's about to _damn well tell him so_, when he gets there first with a resigned "…I'll do it."

Lily had blinked. "You? _You?"_

The smirk that appeared on his mouth at her speechlessness (_bastard_) made her snap again.

"You don't know the first thing about how to clean without magic! You don't have much of a clue how to clean with magic either –", at which point he cut her off with a kiss (the bastard, it's not fair when he does that because _goddammit she had a point to make _and now she can't think to remember quite what it was). "Of course I can!", he said brightly, seeing perhaps that she looked rather less homicidal than a few seconds ago (how can he do that, turn her from homicidal to lovesick in just a few seconds? The bloody _bastard_). "Because I got all those detentions where I had to do Muggle cleaning! I'm great at it!"

"But – but, James, this is different!", Lily retorted weakly, trying to get her wits about her. And then she remembers exactly what her point had been and adds (somewhat pathetically, she has to admit) "And _I _want to do it, not you!".

"I know you do," James replies, nodding his head solemnly as if he's they're discussing a cure for dragon pox instead of her newfound desire to clean the outsides of the upstairs windows without magic. "But I can do it and you can supervise and tell me all the ways I'm doing it wrong, okay?" the corner of his mouth was twitching, and then so was hers (_damn him, damn him to hell_). And then he stepped forward and kissed her again, carefully placing his hands on her very pregnant stomach as he did. So she had to give in.

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Now, Lily sits back on the sofa and closes her eyes. The baby's been keeping her awake at night, kicking and elbowing just as she's been drifting off. But she's too wired to sleep. This impulse, this crazy Petunia-like impulse to _clean_ has been consuming her lately. She can't quite understand it – James is a lazy slob (which bothers her less than she likes to admit; she's not exactly the _tidy_ sort herself). It was one night last week when she woke up to the baby wriggling around inside her, pressing down on her bladder every five seconds. She'd suddenly looked around the bathroom and thought of how much better it would be if she just gave it a quick clean. James hadn't even noticed her hard work the next morning, something he'd tried to defend with the excuse of "I didn't have my glasses on!". But now, even he couldn't fail to miss the way everything gleamed in the house. There was just one thing that wasn't right, and that was the windows. James had looked at her first with some bemusement when she'd told him they needed doing.

"But you cleaned the windows, Lily, you did them last week. You told me, remember? Somewhere in between you telling me you'd shampooed the carpets and reorganised the entire kitchen," and then he'd had to dodge away from her elbows trying to find his ribs.

"This is the _outsides of the upstairs windows_," she'd replied frostily. "I didn't get round to doing them last week. I see you didn't notice what a state they are."

"Of course I bloody didn't! Why the fuck would I look to see how clean _the outsides of the upstairs windows_ are?"

"_Some_ of us," she emphasised, "like a clean house."

"And some of us," he'd rejoined, "do not give a fuck about the outside of the upstairs windows."

"Well, _clearly_," she snarled and then stomped into the living room. He followed her (the bastard).

"For the love of Merlin, just scourgify them and be done with it."

"No, I want to do it properly! By hand!"

"Yeah, well, use your wand. You have to use your hand to use your wand!"

She glowered at him. "_Without_ magic." (He knew exactly what she _meant_, the twat).

"Lily," he said, exasperated. "How are you supposed to do that without magic?"

When she told him her (quite frankly genius plan) of getting a ladder and bucket, his eyes had nearly fallen out of his head. "No. _No_. No way, when you're eight and a half months pregnant, are you _crazy_?"

(And alright, so maybe it wasn't a genius plan. But how else is she supposed to get them clean, like her hands have just been _twitching_ to do?)

She groans loudly, but there's no-one to hear her except the baby. So she sits on her hands instead and surveys the room. When they'd first come to Godric's Hollow, just after she'd found out she was pregnant, it had seemed the ideal place for them. A magical village, where Godric Gryffindor was born, where Bathilda Bagshot was their nearest neighbour, was perfect. And it really _was _perfect here.

Except for the windows.

Lily swears again and (with some difficulty, given that she's sat on the things needed to pull herself up now she's so big) manages to haul herself up. _James will do it, _she tells herself again and again, like a mantra, as she tries to pass the time. It's bad enough she can't do Order work, bad enough she has to stay at home and pace the floors until James returns safe to her. _But today he's fine_, she reminds herself, _it's just a meeting_.

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The afternoon crawls by. The baby is resting inside her, so she doesn't have anything at all to distract her. But she is noticing something, something (if she's being really honest with herself) she's been trying to ignore since yesterday. Little twinges of pain, not really bad but _there_. Enough to make her notice them. A couple of times, strong enough to make her tense up and clutch at whatever's in front of her. But they aren't contractions, _they aren't_. Because she's only eight and a half months pregnant, and it's still July, and the baby is due in August. _It has to be August, it has to be._ Because her baby isn't – _isn't_ – the baby in the prophecy. She won't let herself think otherwise, but as soon as she thinks it, the tears come. Partially out of her own selfishness, and her guilt – because if it isn't her baby, then it's Alice and Frank's. It can only be them, there's no-one else. How can she save her own baby and condemn theirs to Merlin knows what fate? But at the same time, how could it be about her own baby?

_Neville_, she thinks to herself, James had come back from a meeting barely two weeks ago and told her, in a very quiet, un-James-like voice, that Frank had shown them all a photo of Neville. The guilt grips her body. It takes her a moment to realise it's another twinge, except this one's the strongest yet and _oh god, it's not time, it's not time._

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Lily and James have studiously ignored talking about the prophecy ever since Dumbledore told them about it. That night, they'd lain together in bed, him spooning her with his hands spread across her stomach, and hers on top of his. They'd both felt the baby kicking, and James had hidden his face in her hair to cry silent tears. She felt numb, absolutely numb. The next morning, she'd faced him resolutely and said, "It's not going to be our baby.". He nodded back at her, first just to give her a response, and then he held her face in his hands and kissed her so tenderly, it had been the last straw to set her off crying. "It's not," she insisted against his shoulder and James (her husband, the man she loved more than anyone in the world, ever) rocked her until she managed to catch her breath. Then he pushed her back to rest his forehead against hers. "I'm going to look after you. Both of you," and it was Lily's turn to nod and move her hands to clutch at his.

"I know. I know you will."

And James had put up with her through all her moodiness, all her _fucking crazy batshit_ cleaning, and he'd let her call him a bastard without taking offence (because she didn't mean it, she'd not thought he was a bastard since halfway through sixth year when she'd realised just how _good looking_ he was and how _talented_ he was and how _funny_ he was). He'd let Lily not find out the sex of the baby, even though he'd thought it better to know and prepare themselves, because she couldn't stand to think about it. He'd bickered with her to take her mind off the worries she couldn't escape from, just to give her a distraction. He'd not even mentioned that all the cleaning was all part of nesting (and he must've known that's what it was, otherwise he'd have put his foot in it a long time before today, he just couldn't help himself). Nesting. That thing women sometimes did right before they went into labour, right before she'd gone into labour, in fact.

Labour. Lily's in _labour_.

She's going to be a _mother._

_Fuck._

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Lily's not expecting it, but when her baby is in her arms, she feels no anxiety at all. She should, because her baby is a boy and he's born in July and not August (impatient, like his father).

But she isn't, because she loves him, and the wave of love is like nothing she's ever felt before. The first time James holds him, and stares down in utter wonder, she can see his face falling in love with their baby (_their_ _baby_), and she feels the rush of love for them both, so fierce and primal she could rip the hospital apart with her bare hands if she wanted to. And she knows, she _knows,_ that her baby will be safe. Because she will protect him and fight for him, and she won't let anything or anyone bad happen to him, not ever.

And she knows that nothing bad can happen to Neville either. Because if Alice felt even a fraction of what Lily feels now, then Lily knows – Alice would never let anything bad happen to her baby son, either.

For the first time in god knows how many months, Lily feels at peace, with James and their son. She's utterly blissed out, but not so much that she can't be smug when James leans over to kiss her mouth and reminds her of the lovely clean house she has waiting for her.

That is, except the outsides of the upstairs windows (_damn _them. But really, Lily can't bring herself to care anymore).

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**Author's note: As with pretty much everything I write, this did not end the way I thought it would when I started. But I do like it, ramble-y as it is. Also, I was going to write "first floor windows" before I remembered that the first floor in American English is what I (as a Brit) would call the ground floor…so to lessen confusion, the clunky "outsides of the upstairs windows" phrase was born.**

**Another point – I know that this is not strictly canon, but whatever. I like it. I hope you did too! Leave a review and tell me what you think, I will love you forever.**


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